away.  What a desolation is this!  Foreigners are dragging out Lakshmi (the goddess of Good Fortune) by the hand of persecution.  Along with her Plenty has fled, and with Plenty, Health.  The wicked Akabaya (the goddess of Misfortune) stalks with Famine at her side through the country, and relentless Death scatters foul diseases.”

   “Say, where are those splendid ones who promptly shed their blood
   on the spot where my perspiration fell?  They eat bread once in a day,
   but not even enough of that.  They toil through hard times by tightening
   up their bellies.  O People, how have you tolerated in the sacred places
   the carrying off to prison of those holy preceptors, those religious
   teachers of mine, those saintly Brahmans whom I protected—­who, while
   they devoted themselves to their religious practices in times of peace,
   exchanged the Darbah (sacrificial grass) in their hands for weapons
   which they used manfully when occasion required.  The cow, the
  foster-mother of babes when their mother leaves them, the mainstay of the
  hard-worked peasant, the importer of strength to my people, whom I
  worshipped as my mother and protected more than my life, is taken
   daily to the slaughter-house and ruthlessly butchered by the
   unbelievers....  How can I bear this heartrending spectacle?  Have
   all our leaders become like helpless figures on the chess-board?  What
   misfortune has overtaken the land!”

NOTE 5

TILAK IN THE CIVIL COURTS.

The Tai Maharaj case came up once more in September on the Appellate side of the Bombay High Court on appeal against the decision of the Lower Courts.  It was contended on behalf of Tai Maharaj, the widow, that her adoption of one Jagganath was invalid owing to the undue influence brought to bear upon her at the time by Tilak and one of his friends and political associates, Mr. G.S.  Khaparde, who were executors under the will of her husband, Shri Baba Maharajah.  Mr. Justice Chandavarkar, in the course of his judgment reversing the decisions of the Lower Courts, said that on the one hand they had a young inexperienced widow, with a right of ownership but ignorant of that right, and led to believe that she was legally subject to the control of the executors of her husband’s will as regarded the management of the estate which she had by law inherited from her son, prevented from going to Kolhapur even to attend a marriage in a family of relations, and anxious to adopt a boy from Kolhapur as far as possible.  On the other hand they had two men of influence learned in the law, taking her to an out-of-the-way place ostensibly for the selection of a boy, and then, as it were, hustling her there by representing that everything was within, their discretion, and thereby forcing her to adopt their nominee.  In these circumstances they came to the conclusion that the adoption was not valid, because it was brought about by means of undue influence exercised over Tai Maharaj by both Tilak and Khaparde.